Can a woman ever really change a man?

It's that age-old dilemma: you've started dating a man, things are going
pretty well - but you want to change some aspects of his style and
personality. Is it ever possible or the right thing to do? Rebecca Holman
investigates for Telegraph Wonder Women.

Jessica Biel's character Kara, gets frustrated with her man in the film Valentine's Day.Photo: Ron Batzdorff

What are your relationship deal breakers? The news that your perfect man doesn’t ever want to get married or have children? The fact that he has a monster coke habit and gets a bit mean and aggressive when he’s drunk?

Or maybe you sweat the smaller stuff – after all, a terrible haircut, a bad slip-on shoe or some errant nose hair are all indicative of poor personal grooming habits and bad taste, and you don’t want to spend the rest of your life with someone who fundamentally has horrible taste, do you?

FYI, I fall into the latter category – I’ve been known to chuck men for wearing bad traveller’s beads, Speedo-style underpants rather than boxer shorts, and those bloody red trousers. Some things you just can’t un-see.

But according to some of my friends, I’m a fool, rejecting perfectly good men just because they think it’s acceptable to wear beads with a suit. After all, they argue, these are the sort of little things you can change over time. You can slowly introduce a skincare routine. After the 12-month mark you can start to develop an opinion on their hair cut, and after a few years you can take over buying their clothes completely.

What bothers you?

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Now I disagree. I (foolishly? naively?) think that even wanting to change these small things in a potential paramour is a recipe for disaster – after all, if you spend your time, early on in a relationship, fixating on the things you don’t like about your partner, how are you ever going to remember all the things you do like? And there’s nothing worse than that sinking feeling you get when your date walks into the room, and you clock sight of his shoes.

But maybe I’m alone. A survey carried out for Marks and Spencer and Oxfam’s Shwopping initiative earlier this year discovered that it takes women six months to start demanding their bloke changes his fashion sense. Half of women polled admitted to throwing away their partner’s offending items without their knowledge, and one in seven admitted to putting them in the wrong wash on purpose (despite the fact that we appear to have staggered into an episode of On The Buses, the aforementioned survey was genuinely conducted this year, I promise).

So, I wouldn’t try and change what a man wears, or his haircut, or his skincare routine, because frankly I wouldn’t let things get that far in the first place – but what about the big stuff? Forget a turned up rugby-short collar here, a tanned platted belt there, what if he really is an aggressive coke fiend? Or a feckless shagger? Or if he thinks that he doesn’t need a proper job because his band’s totally going to make it some day?

In that case, move over ladies, I’m going to try and make that man my boyfriend. I think altering your bloke’s wardrobe is a bit passive aggressive – but if he has a borderline personality disorder for me to fix, it’s a project.

Personality transformations are tough

After all, if he changes for me, instead of all the other women who came before me, it means I’m better - I’ve won, haven’t I?

As you’ve probably guessed, they never change, and I never win, because trying to change someone’s fundamental personality traits is never going to work, even if the fundamental personality trait in question is being a bit of a douche bag. And do I ever learn? Do I hell.

So where do we women draw the line? Getting someone to start picking up their socks is fine, and apparently reshaping your partner’s wardrobe to your own tastes is also acceptable. But what about criticising their weight? That’s fine because you want them to be healthy, isn’t it? And suggesting they get hair plugs? You’re saying it because you care - you just want them to make the best of themselves, which is a loving thing to do, yes?

And what if they resist this change? What if you have to start monitoring their food intake and erm…driving them to the hair plug doctor (hair plug doctor?)? Then you become a nag, a classic sit-com housewife, and your entire relationship becomes one giant argument about his imperfections.

'Self-improvement'....

I can see how it could become a slippery slope – once you’ve changed one thing with relatively little resistance, you’ll be tempted to move onto the next little niggle. You’ll start comparing your boyfriend to your friends’ partners, and next thing you know, you’re making little competitive upgrades. Or worse, you all end up with five identical boyfriends, perfectly coiffed and rubbing their newly acquired man moisturiser into their faces.

But according to married friends, it’s just a part and parcel of a long-term relationship. One explained: “I feel like I’m constantly trying change my husband – it’s an ongoing thing and has been for a few years. I fundamentally like who he is – I love him and married him – but I can’t help seeing room for improvement everywhere. I just see it as part of marriage, and he really doesn’t seem to mind. I’d stop if he did – I don’t want to be a nag.”

Can a man change a woman?

Let’s look at the other side of the coin. As a woman, how would you feel if your current boyfriend tried to change the way you dress? Or your weight? Or fundamentally doesn’t like an aspect of your personality?

Sophie, 34, found herself in just this position when she moved in with her (now ex) boyfriend. “Initially, everything was fine – we got on brilliantly for the first year. Then he slowly started criticising what I ate, how often I went to the gym, how much I drank and how much money I spent.”

“It happened so gradually, and I was so keen to please him and make it work, that I didn’t realise how much I’d changed – and how much our relationship depended on me being a perfect version of myself.”

Sophie ended it after three years when she realised that she could never make her ex happy just by being herself. “I wouldn’t enter into a relationship now unless we agreed on some fundamentals – religion, our attitude to money and even our attitude to alcohol – there are some ways in which you just need to be compatible from the outset. And with the rest I’d make sure I stood up for myself from the beginning”

As a woman, I’m outraged on Sophie’s behalf that her boyfriend felt the need to change her like that – but if one of my female friends was trying to get her boyfriend to cut down on how much he drank, lose a bit of weight or sort out his finances, I’d be much less concerned – why is this?

I want to say it should be straightforward – if you’re in a relationship with someone, you’re kind and generous to them, and they can’t bring themselves to do the same back, you shouldn’t be in that relationship. But of course it’s not that black and white – you can start off wanting someone to be the best version of themselves, and to reach their true potential so that they’re happy, but how soon till you’re taking every failure in their life personally, and not allowing them the luxury of faults, lest they embarrass you?

So, I’m sticking to my guns with the red trousers, the traveller’s beads and the bad shoes. If I can’t live with it now, then I’m certainly not going to want to live with it in a decade’s time.

And as for the personality disorders, the feckless shaggers and the alcoholics? I’d like to say that I’ve learnt my lesson and I’ll steer clear from now on, but I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep…

Rebecca Holman has a decade's experience in women's consumer publishing. Starting her career on the award-winning asos.com magazine, Rebecca then went on to edit handbag.com and launch xoJane.co.uk with American media legend Jane Pratt. She is a freelance writer and editor who writes about women's issues, current affairs, sex and dating. Follow her on Twitter @rebecca_hol.